Cuban Blockade Service Honored

April 25, 2003|By JESSE HAMILTON; Courant Staff Writer

EAST HARTFORD — It's hard to believe John Hollis was a seaman first class.

Bellowing in his room-filling voice, shaking hands with old pals -- a congressman and a mayor -- in the wood-paneled back room of a Veterans of Foreign Wars post, it's hard to believe big John Hollis wasn't a captain in the Kennedy-era U.S. Navy.

But he was just a sailor, one of many on the USS Essex, an aircraft carrier that served in one of America's most tense standoffs, the sea blockade during what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He and the rest of the crew were on alert in sweltering heat for a month. Only now, more than 40 years later, is he getting a little credit for it.

In a ceremony Thursday at the East Hartford VFW post, U.S. Rep. John Larson, an old friend, handed him four medals for his Cuban service. Displayed on a board were the National Defense Service Medal, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the Navy Expeditionary Medal and the one that got a good laugh from those who know him best, the Good Conduct Medal.

Hollis gave his thanks for the tardy commendations. He used the moment to remind the crowd that his nephews, Edward Dettore and Paul D. Rathbun, are serving in Iraq, Dettore as a Chinook helicopter crew chief and Rathbun as a mechanic for the A-10 fighter jets from the 103rd Fighter Wing of Connecticut's Air National Guard.

``They're in there fighting for our freedoms,'' Hollis said.

He announced that he would hang two blue-star banners -- the symbols for those families with soldiers, sailors and marines overseas -- in the VFW building. He said he encourages families to use the VFW post on Bidwell Street for their own banners until the fighting men and women come home. The telephone number is 860-289-9660.

``We're all in this together,'' Hollis said.

He's a retired beer distributor and now legislative consultant specializing in labor relations. But the medals reminded the 61-year-old of the few years in his youth when the country's future was tied with that of a nearby island nation -- Cuba, the closest communist state in the Cold War.

Before giving Hollis the medals, Larson described 1962 as ``a time when we were this close to nuclear war,'' he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger, an inch of space between.

For Hollis, who had served during the earlier Bay of Pigs conflict, keeping nuclear missiles from being shipped to Cuba became his job, as well as the job of thousands of other sailors. He remembers his shipmates on the Essex eating at their battle stations, leaving only for bathroom breaks. Thirty-six aircraft were ready in the ship and four destroyers patrolled with the Essex, just one carrier group in the conflict.

``It was like an old Mexican standoff,'' he said. ``We knew we were involved in something very significant.''

He didn't know he had medals coming to him until he asked Larson's office to help him confirm his foreign war service as he prepared to take over the post of commander at the VFW. So the medals came to him Thursday, just before his swearing-in as commander.

State legislators, friends, family members and veterans packed the VFW. They praised his service, including the work that came after the Navy, as recently as Sept. 11, 2001, when Mayor Timothy Larson recalled Hollis' helping the town deliver supplies to those working at New York's ground zero.

As Larson put it: ``John is legendary. What he's known most for is he's got a heart as big as East Hartford.''